TAUNTON — Mass decontamination units have been issued to some local fire departments to support the Bay State’s homeland security apparatus. On Saturday, at its Oakland Station, Taunton Fire Department held a training exercise, led by training officer Capt. David Santos.

“The way that this whole system was designed is that one of these goes to every community with a hospital,” said Taunton Fire Chief Timothy Bradshaw. “One per hospital. The idea is to protect the hospital in the event of a mass exposure. The hospital would go into lockdown and the only way into the hospital would be through the decontamination unit.”

Morton Hospital partners with the Taunton fire and police departments to coordinate various types of emergency preparedness drills and education programs, including mass decontamination exercises.

According to Todd Martin, regional director of environmental health and safety for Morton Hospital and Saint Anne’s Hospital, drills are essential to ensuring the hospital’s and city’s preparedness to effectively respond to mass casualty incidents.

“Mass decontamination units play a critical role in incidents involving hazardous materials or other contaminants that could pose a health risk to humans and potentially be spread from one person to another,” said Martin. “Mobile mass decontamination units are utilized in order to avoid the potential contamination of patients already in the hospital’s Emergency Department.”

To prepare for a future biological attack or any sort of mass exposure to hazardous materials, the fire department has been training with hospital staff to familiarize both with protocol should an emergency arise.

“The fact that the Taunton Fire Department has a mass decontamination unit readily available to deploy to the hospital or other location in the community as needed helps to ensure our continued readiness to respond to such an incident and treat victims quickly and effectively, while minimizing potential harm to others,” Martin said.

During drills and exercises, participants play out various contamination scenarios.

“We have a lot of stuff in our industrial park that could be hazardous,” Bradshaw said. “This gives us the ability to clean up some victims quickly to get them to the place where they need to be. We’ve trained with the hospital staff a few times. We go over how the hospital would go into lockdown.”

If a mass exposure emergency occurred, the fire department could erect the mass decontamination unit at the hospital entrance.

“Nobody will be able to get in unless they went through the tent,” Bradshaw said. “Then hospital staff can be assured that at least minimal decontamination took place.”